Good Food or Good Exercise: What Really Burns the Weight Off?

PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooryi recently said in this CNNMoney.com article that “if all consumers exercised … obesity wouldn’t exist.” I find that to be an incredibly naive statement. But if your paycheck came from selling the rhetorical Kool-Aid, you’d probably say the same thing.

Almost two-thirds of American are overweight or obese. That number is set to grow: If a child between 10-12 years old is currently overweight, they have a 70% chance of turning into an obese adult, and I’ve written about here. That’s why I love what Jaime Oliver is doing right now with his Food Revolution.

So, is it all about proper exercise to lose weight? Or is it about what you eat? Most diet (for  lack of a better word) books I pick up — at least written by the most respectable sources — always seem to focus on a food plan before delving into an exercise plan.

One of the major reasons is because there is only so much weight that can be lost through exercise. In fact, according to the Editor-in-Chief of Men’s Health, David Zinczenko, only 15 to 20% of your calorie burn can come through movement or exercise. Between 60 and 80% of calorie burn comes from doing nothing. We call this your basal or resting metabolism. The remainder or 10 to 30% of calories is burned through digestion. So it is vital you are eating well. That you can control.

So no, Mrs. Nooryi, I don’t think the answer is if all consumers exercised obesity wouldn’t exist. But I do think if they stopped drinking all your high-fructose corn syrup they’d have a fighting chance. It’s hard to support your better products like Naked Juice when you peddle liquid killers and blame the rat for drinking the poison you so ostentatiously supply. I’m not without my own sins, but at least I won’t be forced to drink this stuff everyday in purgatory. Warm.

Exercise needs to be in the mix, of course. Here’s a recent plug from Dr. Oz. In this month’s issue of AARP Magazine, he has an excellent article about getting healthy in six months. Dr. Oz said that if you cannot walk a quarter mile in 5 minutes, you have a 25% chance of dying within the next six years. He then made a connection how these numbers mean you are more likely to die from not being able to walk than from cancer. Dr. Oz presents his stats with spice!

Now here is my water plug: Get in the pool and walk it out. You’ll burn between 100-150 more calories than walking on land. And if you are looking to lose weight, the water is a supportive medium that will  be kind to your body issues, making you feel light and thus definitely inspired to stay in. I guarantee it. I have a student right now who has lost more than 30 pounds in the past 3 months through diet and working out in water. Simple movements, like scissor legs, which is flutter kicking in the water, is a great start. An of all the exercises Dr. Oz could have chosen in his article, scissors kick was the only one he pushed. I get it space was limited, and he only had room for one — but nevertheless, this was the one.

It really isn’t more expense to eat whole or healthier foods than cheaper processed foods, and this Being Frugal post backs the claim up. I can as well: ever since we started exclusively eating whole foods (I define as farmer’s market produce, organic brands, and nothing packaged) we eat less. Yes, I pay more for a cut of meat or a bunch of carrots, but we get full faster and consume less and also spread the meals out into 6 versus 3 to stop stuffing our bellies. Because the skill of budgeting is practiced, I’ve become very aware of my internal grocery finances and I know now when I’ve spent my mark. Once you stop eating a lot of red meat and switch to softer proteins like fish, you get mental about the idea of digesting steak. And you know what? Another perk is less dishes to clean. Our food is not so complicated to make. And my taste buds are renewing themselves. I already knew I was a tomato snob, and now I know why: Because tomatoes taste best when they are in season. Farmer’s market’s teach about eating seasonal food.

One more great article I will stick you with is this Wise Bread entry about the 9 Habits of the World’s Healthiest People. These people get to drink red wine, take lots of vacations and hang out with friends too much. I want to be one of them! Go ahead and leave a comment … Jaime. Jennifer. I know you’re reading!

Could You Be Working Out Your Abs Without Knowing It? More on The Abs Diet

If you’ve been following my posts on the New York Times Best Seller, The Abs Power Diet for Women, you know we’ve talked about the ABS DIET POWER, a clever acronym to remember the foods to eat (ie. A = Almonds or W = Whey) or to just stay away from fake foods (when you can’t remember anything). We know The Abs Diet promotes 6 smaller meals a day and a focus on working muscles, as in more fuel and more muscle equals less flab.

What’s great to hear is the author Zinczenko beings his ab exercise formula by first starting and stressing the importance of working a very large muscle group in your body, which happen to be your legs, not your abs.

Most of your body’s muscles are found below your belly button, writes Zinczenko. Working these leg muscles “triggers the release of hormones that stimulate muscle growth throughout your body, kick your fat-burners into overdrive, and give you that thin-as-a-dime stomach you want.”

He goes on to share a Norwegian study where people who focused on lower-body work actually gained more upper body strength than a group who spent the majority of their time on upper-body exercises.

Who would have thunk. But that is great news for use water-lovers because most water workouts are 85% lower body, especially when it comes to water aerobics.

So much of what we think makes sense in health and fitness — drink 8 classes of water a day, always stretch before working out — well, some of it proves to be false. I remember one of my water aerobic instructors telling me when she started 20 years ago, she used plastic milk jugs filled with water as weights; in our field, we now understand the properties of using floating Styrofoam weights and working muscles opposite than you would on land due the laws of gravity, or the laws of buoyancy .

New or corrected studies and information is what makes fitness so interesting, and working out in the water is definitely cutting edge. Another interesting unknown I have for you is that you might not know an entire water aerobics class can be all about abs. Because 85% of the water workout is legs, and The Abs Diet just shared with us that working our leg muscles in various exercises stimulates muscle growth throughout our bodies.

It’s not about doing 1,000 crunches on land to get great abs. The headlining news is that getting great abs is really about having a holistic look at your body, from what you put into it to your posture to the exercise regime you choose. Think outside of the box.